Tag: blog

Posted in Philosophy

Where The Wind Blows From

Posted on by Jinavie

Wind is a funny thing. It is all around us and we know it is there from what it does. From how it rustles the leaves on a tree, how it feels against our cheeks, to even the destruction it causes through a storm. However, we never know where it comes from. Sure, we can point at the general direction, but we cannot pinpoint exactly what caused the wind and where it started.

Sometimes in life, a similar thing happens to our hearts as well. Sometimes we are smitten with a feeling or emotion. It may be a warm, breezy sensation that makes you feel happy, or it may be a whirlwind that makes you fall head over heels and feel absolutely helpless in the face of it. More often than not, we cannot find the exact reason or source for this. Even worse, sometimes we figure it out, but far too late.

Like the wind, you may never be able to find where those feelings are coming from, no matter how far you travel. But regardless, perhaps it’s not such a foolish thing to follow the wind. You may not find where it’s blowing from, but at least it will feel nice and keep you cool.

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Posted in Science & Nature

Birthday Problem

Posted on by Jinavie

How many people do you need in a room until there are two people with the same birthdays? The pigeonhole principle dictates that (excluding February 29) since there are 365 birthdays, 366 people in a room would guarantee two people sharing birthdays. However, this is only the number needed to absolutely guarantee a pairing. Using a neat statistical trick known as the birthday problem (or birthday paradox), we can find that a much smaller number is needed to solve the problem.

Let us assume that every birthday is equally possible (in real life, some birthdays are more common than others). If there are 30 people in the room, Person 1 has a chance of sharing a birthday with each of the other 29 people (possible pairs). Person 2 can be paired with 28 people (since they have already been “paired” to 1), Person 3 with 27 people and so forth. Therefore, the number of chances are: 29 + 28 + 27+ … + 1. Using Gauss’s handy addition trick, the total number is (29 + 1) x 29/2 = 435. We can see already that although the total number of individuals is only 30, the total number of pairs already exceeds 365. Since the probability of having a certain birthday is 1/365, it is likely that it would occur when you have so many possible chances.

Using statistical analysis, it can be found that when there are 23 people, the odds of there being a match surpasses 50%, making it more likely that two people share a birthday than not. By 70 people, the probability of a match grows to 99.9%. Therefore, with only 19% of the number required by the pigeonhole principle, the birthday problem can say with 99.9% certainty that there will be two people sharing a birthday.

Posted in Science & Nature

Card Shuffling

Posted on by Jinavie

Take a standard deck of playing cards. Shuffle it thoroughly and set it on the table. Consider this: what is the probability that the order those 52 cards are in is the same as the order of a deck shuffled by someone else? The answer can be found using a simple maths equation: 52!

! denotes a factorial, where you multiply the number to every other positive integer smaller than it. For example, 5! = 5 x 4 x 3 x 2 x 1 = 120. Due to its nature, factorials grow rapidly – even faster than exponentials. For example, 10! is 3.6 million and 15! is 1.3 quadrillion. By 52!, the number grows to:

80,658,175,170,943,878,571,660,636,856,403,766,975,289,505,440,883,277,824,000,000,000,000.

This number is so big that if every star in our galaxy had a trillion planets, each with a trillion people living on it, all shuffling a trillion deck of cards at the rate of 1000 shuffles per second, since the beginning of time, only now would someone have a deck that is in the exact order as your deck.

Ergo, you can say with absolute, mathematical certainty, that the deck you have shuffled is in an order never created by any human being in the history of the world.

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Posted in Science & Nature

Discomfort Index

Posted on by Jinavie

Hot and humid weather is quite possibly the worst weather, as most people will feel sticky and uncomfortable, to the point that it will affect their mood and ability to think. This combination is so terrible that weather forecasts often mention a discomfort index (or temperature-humidity index) to highlight how hot and humid the day will be. Discomfort index is calculated as:

DI = 40.6 + 0.72 (dry-bulb temperature + wet-bulb temperature ).

Here, dry bulb temperature is the “ambient temperature” (not considering humidity), while wet bulb temperature accounts for humidity by looking at how low the temperature can get by evaporating water.

Evaporation absorbs heat but can only happen if the air is not saturated with humidity. Therefore, the more humid it is, the more “discomfort” we feel as we cannot sweat off the heat building up inside our bodies.

When the DI is at 70, about 10% of people experience discomfort. At 75, 50% feel discomfort and at 80, most people will feel extremely uncomfortable. A DI of above 85 is virtually intolerable and anything above this, serious conditions such as heat exhaustion and heat stroke can occur.

As our core body temperature rises and we cannot cool down by sweating, we experience thermal stress. Under thermal stress, our concentration and task performance begins to suffer – a phenomenon people will describe as their brain feeling as if it is melting. This is a well-established phenomenon that has significantly affected how architects design offices and homes to improve air flow and temperature control to create an environment with the least thermal stress possible – for both efficiency and comfort.

Posted in Psychology & Medicine

A Sensational Experience

Posted on by Jinavie

We use our senses to interpret the world around us. Thanks to photography, video and sound recording, we are able to preserve what we see and hear in our lives. If you have the good fortune of seeing an incredible view such as a beautiful sunset, you can take a photo, look at it ten years later and remember what it was like watching it with your own eyes. If you miss the sound of your loved one’s voice, you can record the sound and play it again.

However, we are still unable to record senses such as taste, smell and touch. No matter how hard you try, you can never perfectly describe the taste of your mother’s cooking, the soft touch that you felt during your first kiss, or the scent of the person you love to another person using just words. This means that these sensations are only in your memories – and yours alone.

It is a shame that you cannot recall these experiences perfectly, as some of our best memories are associated with them. But perhaps you could think of it from a romantic point of view. You can share a photo or a sound clip with others to share your experience – even make it public so that everyone can know of it. However, with things like taste and smell, only you will know and remember that specific sensation. It is a truly unique experience that belongs only to you (and the few others who were lucky to have tasted your mother’s cooking).

Furthermore, as it is only in your memories, the moment you forget about it, the experience will disappear forever. Maybe that is why people cling to nostalgia of these senses – because it is a fragile yet precious thing that is worth treasuring and holding on to.

Posted in Philosophy

The First Move

Posted on by Jinavie

In the game of chess, every move counts. Each action you take can drastically change the way the game will play out from there on. By the second move, there are 72,084 possible games. By the third move, 9 million possible games exist. By the fourth, there are 318 trillion possible games. Essentially, after the first move, the game becomes nearly impossible to predict. There are more possible games on a chessboard than there are atoms in the universe. What spawns all of these possibilities is the first move.

This makes the first move all that terrifying. One mistake and you have destroyed countless possibilities where you are victorious. On the last few moves of the game, the results are much more predictable as the possibilities have been weeded out. Therefore, you can have more confidence in your moves. But the first move is as far as you can get from the end move, with an infinite sea of possibilities between you and the other side.

The corollary to this is that if you do make a mistake on your first move, then you have infinite ways to fix that mistake. So don’t be afraid of taking the first move – simply relax and play the game.

(inspiration/paraphrased from Harold Finch, Person of Interest)

Posted in Life & Happiness

Deserving Love

Posted on by Jinavie

One of our greatest weaknesses as a human being is that we never seem to be satisfied with “just right”. We always think we have too much or too little of something and this torments us. The same can be said of love. People will often complain that they are not loved enough by their family, friends or significant others. This is natural, for we tend to crave love and attention more than we are willing to give it to others.

The more interesting situation is when people complain of being loved too much. One defence regarding this is that they do not feel that they deserve this love. Some people claim that because of who they are (or more commonly, who they aren’t), they are not worthy to receive the tender loving care offered by another person. Of course sometimes this is said as a plesantry, but in some cases, a person may feel so guilty of this that they will reject the gesture and push the people they love away.

What does it mean to be “deserving” of love? Does this imply that love is some kind of karmic reward that should only be received if we have been kind and generous to others? We are often the harshest judges of our own character and more often than not, we will rate ourselves lower than how others see us. Some people are able to appreciate and be grateful for the kindness of others, while not seeing the effect their own kindness has on others. Because of this mismatch, sometimes we may think that others are being kinder to us than we are to them.

Knowing this, perhaps it would be easier if instead of tormenting ourselves with the question of whether we deserve someone’s love or note, we should let others judge how much love we deserve from them. For they are the ones who feel the kindness in our words and actions, and they are the ones who wish to return that kindness back to us. Instead of feeling guilty of whether you deserve someone’s love or not, feel grateful that you have people in your life that care about you.

And if you cannot shake the feeling that you really are not deserving of that love, there is only one real solution. Be more generous with your kindness and reciprocate that love to others to make up for whatever you are feeling guilty of. Love is an infinite resource and there is plenty to go around for everyone.

Posted in Philosophy

The Minds Of Others

Posted on by Jinavie

How do we know that the world we perceive is the same as other people? How do we know that what I call “red” looks the same to another person? How do we know that other people are hearing the same music, smelling the same scent or even feeling the same emotions that we do? We infer from other people’s behaviours that fundamentally, we are all the “same”. We see other people enjoy the same things as us or think along the same lines as us, then we empathise.

However, as human beings, we are unable to read other people’s minds. All we can do is interpret people’s speech and behaviour to try gauge what they are thinking. This means that technically speaking, we can never truly know that other people have minds of their own. For all you know, the person in front of you could be an automaton that is programmed to respond to their environment in a manner similar to you.

As discussed above, we subjectively know (or assume) that other people have minds of their own, given what we observe. But then what of animals, artificial intelligence or even comatose people? How can we know that they have a conscious mind? The short answer is that there is no black-or-white answer, but it sure is an interesting philosophical discussion to ponder – one which has been pondered for millennia. This is the problem of other minds.

We cannot objectively “see” or read into another conscious mind. However, we can approximate what that mind is like from the person’s behaviour – their words and their actions. This is almost like sketching an animal that you have never seen just by listening to someone giving you an account of it. Therefore, if you want to get to know someone – to understand their mind, their essence, their soul – all you can do is talk with them, sketching out the finer details as the conversations get deeper and deeper.

Posted in Science & Nature

Fusion

Posted on by Jinavie

One of the greatest challenges for modern science is unlocking the secret of nuclear fusion. Nuclear fusion presents the opportunity for humanity to obtain an extremely efficient yet surprisingly clean source of energy. Einstein’s famous equation – E=mc² – shows the relationship between energy and mass. It turns out that all matter is essentially energy, meaning that by breaking apart the matter to its basic constituents, you can unleash energy.

When two hydrogen atoms are collided together at extremely high speeds, the two protons join with enough energy to form deuterium, while releasing energy. As more hydrogens are collided, helium is formed while releasing more energy and also hydrogen, which can fuse with other hydrogen to start more reactions. This is a chain reaction. Once the chain reaction is established, the fusion reaction will keep producing immense amounts of energy until it uses up all the hydrogen available.

However, there are two main problems we are still trying to solve when it comes to unlocking fusion. The first is generating enough energy to kickstart the chain reaction in the first place, which is called ignition. The second is containing this immense energy, as the intense heat produced would melt any material we can produce to contain it.

This brief overview of nuclear fusion also offers a lesson in life. Most of the good things in life are not single events, but self-sustaining processes. Things like good habits, happiness and human relationships. To form a good habit, you must invest incredible amounts of time, resources and willpower. To start a relationship, you need to make an effort to show the other person how much they mean to you. To be happy, you need to completely change the way you perceive the world.

The best things in life do not happen by accident, but because you made an effort to ignite the chain reactions. Of course, you will constantly need to maintain those reactions so they don’t explode on you, but at the end of the day, starting is really half the battle.

(Couldn’t come up with an appropriate picture for this article……..so here’s a gif of Groot dancing)

Posted in History & Literature

Morse Code

Posted on by Jinavie

In 1825, an artist by the name of Samuel Morse was travelling to a city far from his home to paint a commission. While working on his painting, he received a letter from his father, which informed Samuel that his wife was ill with an infection. The next day, another letter came, but this time detailing his wife’s sudden death. Upon receiving the letter, Morse immediately returned to his home as fast as possible, but he arrived after they had already buried his wife. This was the age before fast long-distance communication, where messages could only be sent as fast as the horses that carried them.

Frustrated by the inefficient communication methods of his time, Morse became dedicated to devising a better way to send messages over long distance at a much faster speed. After intensive studying of electromagnetism, Morse eventually developed the first concept of a single-wire telegraph. The telegraph could send electrical signals of variable length at fast speeds down wires with a simple button.

Together with the telegraph, Morse devised a code alphabet so that messages could be sent encoded into short and long signals on the telegraph. A dot (“dit”) represents a short press, a dash (“dah”) represents a long press (three times longer than a short press). Each letter is separated by a space the length of 3 dots. Words would be spaced out by a slightly longer pause – the length of 7 dots. Morse designed the code to be efficient and so he made the most common letters (E, I, S, T and so forth) the shortest in length.

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